


Twilit Empress

by mitspeiler



Series: The Legend of Rose [2]
Category: Homestuck, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The Legend of Zelda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Chases, Courage, Escapes, Fencing, Fighting, Giants, I'll try to stay awake, Les8ifins, Miracles, Monsters, Multi, Or Is It?, Revenge, The Homestuck name is good for like fifty language tags, Torture, True Love, Wisdom, You Have Been Warned, You decide!, power, references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-23
Updated: 2013-12-23
Packaged: 2018-01-05 20:15:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitspeiler/pseuds/mitspeiler
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wherein I transplant Homestuck characters into the setting of Twilight Princess.  Aranea Serket is give an important task; deliver Ordon Village's yearly tribute to Hyrule Castle.  On the day before her departure, the village is raided by monsters and dragged across a veil of darkness to a strange otherworld-or is it the same world?  Aranea wakes up to find that she's been turned into a monster hersef. A being named Meenah offers her freedom in exchange for servitude...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Twilit Empress

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lordlyhour](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lordlyhour/gifts).



            The light flickered like shimmering chips of gold across the surface of the crystalline waters of the Spirit Spring.  Aranea sat at its edge, dipping her bare foot into the water contentedly.  She saw her reflection; round face, big blue eyes, daringly short red hair.  She splashed a bit, shattering it into pieces. 

            The Spring was located a ways off the road into Ordon Woods, just far enough so people didn’t come here too often.  All around, the ancient trees groaned with the weight of hanging moss and vines.  It was summer, so the days were long and humid, the sunsets were spectacular, and the world was entirely green. It was good to come here sometimes and be alone.  The people in the village just…didn’t understand her as well as they should.  They thought she was a know-it-all and a snob.  Just because she would rather read books than say, _tackle goats the size of horses_ for fun…

            Her left ear, pointed and coated in deep grey fur like a wolf, a sign of Hylian lineage, swiveled as someone entered the clearing.  “Hey there Miss Serket,” said a calm, soothing voice.  She turned around and saw one of the village elders, Rufioh Nitram.  A great big bull of a man, he were his hair in a mohawk, died red at the front, and went about dressed in black and red leather armor sewn with animal bones.  For all of that, he was one of the kindest and most considerate people in Ordon and one of the few that could stand Aranea.

            “Hello,” she said with a bright smile.  “Did you know that the hour of twilight is considered to be a time when the veil separating the living world and the dead is at its thinnest?  Because it is the metaphorical ‘death’ of the current day with the sunset representing spilled blood, and therefore all who inhabit the day plunge down with it nightly into the world of death.  Conversely, the veil is strongest at sunrise where the red represents the bloody afterbirth of new life—”

            “Actually,” said Rufioh, “There was something I wanted to talk to you about, if it’s not too much trouble.”  Aranea promptly shut her mouth.  No reason to turn him to the other side.

            He sat down next to her on a rock and looked into the clear water for a second before continuing.  “You’re a really smart girl, and you have a lot of potential,” he began.  Aranea nodded happily at the compliment.  “So it’ll probably be good for you to get out and see the world sometime,” he said.

            Aranea raised an eyebrow. “I’m sure it would, but whatever do you mean?’

            “The time for the annual tribute to Hyrule is coming,” he said, and was interrupted.

            “Oh that’s right,” said Aranea brightly.  “Ordon Province was conquered from Sosaria four hundred years ago, in the Tenth Year of Queen Zelda XVII, referred to as Zelda the Conqueror in Hyrule but colloquially known both in Ordon and Sosaria as ‘ _Zelly Botellas’_ —”

            “Good you remembered,” said Rufioh, and Aranea bit down on her tongue and covered her mouth.  Dammit, she thought, sometimes people just want to talk and not have history lessons taught at them—

            “So I was thinking that maybe you could deliver the tribute this year,” he said, and the world slipped out from under Aranea’s feet.  She’d never even been to Faron and the border was less than a mile from here!  To go all the way to the Castle Town on her own was a daunting prospect—and yet now the idea was in her head, she wanted nothing more in the whole world. 

            “You’ll get a horse,” Rufioh said, mistaking her speechlessness for apprehension, “and some money.  We won’t just send you out into the world with no help at all.  But it’ll be a good experience for you.  You’ll get to see a little piece of the world and make some connections outside the village—”

            She squealed and threw her arms around his neck.

 

            “That monkey,” Vriska hissed as she watched the huge forest baboon eat a papaya with its feet.  It was sitting across the stream from Vriska and the other village children with a little pile of fruit it had nicked from various vegetable gardens.  The water was clear but deep and moving swiftly, and the streambed full of boulders.  Ordon Village was set in a very dramatic location, at the foot of the stony Orda Mountains separating Hyrule proper from Sosaria.  The village was on one side of a wide mountain stream where the ground was flat and the soil fertile; the monkey was on the other, which was uneven and rocky and gave way to the dense forest that straddled the border with Faron Province. 

            The monkey burped.  It looked at her with its big, black button eyes and purred affectionately.  “That monkey has terrorized our village for the last time!”  Vriska shouted.  It started a little but settled back down almost immediately.

            “Um,” said Tavros, “she’s not really hurting anyone.  She just takes a piece of fruit here and there from all the houses, nothing anyone would miss.  Mom even leaves some out for her sometimes—”

            “ _Feeding the pests just makes them think it’s okay to come here_ ,” Vriska hissed.

            “I thought it was?” asked Feferi.  Vriska loomed over the other girl, quite a feat considering Feferi was taller than her.  Her blue eyes attempted to bore holes in Feferi’s pink ones—to no avail, she was entirely unfazed.  Feferi giggled.  “You have freckles,” she said, poking Vriska’s cheek. 

            Vriska growled, ears lying flat against her head.  There was a notch in the left one where she’d been bitten by an animal once; she’d bitten it back until it fled in terror.  She turned around and threw a stick at the monkey; it flew straight and sure across the stream and cracked in two at its feet.  The gentle creature was twice Vriska’s size and could easily have snapped her like a twig but instead took off like a shot into the woods, then returned to snatch as much fruit from its pile as it could before running back.

            “Let’s follow it!” she declared, unsheathing a wooden sword that Rufioh had painstakingly carved for her.

            “Her,” corrected Tavros.

            “If you humanize the enemy it’ll be harder to destroy,” Vriska snorted.  The other children, with the exclusion of Sollux, ‘oohed’ at her knowledge.  It paid to listen to her sister’s endless lectures, Vriska thought, though knowledge is much more useful when paired with _actual_ charisma.  “I know where the monkeys are hiding!” she declared.  “Their troop lives in the old temple across the border!  The path leads _right up to it guys_!”  No one had any actual delusions of killing the poor monkeys; even Vriska would probably give one a few taps with her stick and declare it vanquished before returning to the village in triumph.  Even so, it was fun to head off into the ‘dangerous’ unknown with nothing but your friends and a trusty sword keeping you from _certain death_.

            Tavros was an awkward little boy and didn’t understand this, so he hung back near the entrance of the woods as the other three streamed past.  Feferi gave him a half-hearted wave goodbye, but otherwise he was not spared a second glance.

            The Serket house was the first one in the village, coming from Hyrule.  It had been built up a tree and peeked over the stony ridges that crisscrossed the region; on a clear day the Serkets could see all the way to the plains, and Vriska claimed, Hyrule castle.  She insisted the roof tiles were blue.  Tavros hung around here, wondering what to do.  Should he tell someone in case they got in trouble?  But if they didn’t then he would be snitch!  And if they did he would _still_ be a snitch because Vriska was sure she could handle anything, and she probably could!  But what about the poor monkeys?  They hadn’t done any real wrong!  What should he do?

            He’d almost made up his mind to tell Rufioh when Aranea practically skipped into the clearing holding several bundles.  Oh dear, Vriska’s sister was very pretty, and Tavros felt himself starting to blush again and _oh Din Farore and Nayru she was wearing the short black dress again what was the occasion—_ his nose started bleeding and he covered it immediately.  Aranea had told him that was just an old wives’ tale that boys get nosebleeds around girls they like so _why did it happen so often_?

            “Hello Tavros,” she said, and he could swear that _all the blood in his body_ was in his face now and he would keel over at any moment.  “Have you seen Vriska?  I have big news!”

            “She ran into the forest to fight the monkeys!” he shouted, letting go of his face and causing the blood to just _spew_ out all over the front of his shirt.  He only cried a little.

 

            Aranea got him cleaned up and gave him some beef broth.  “You probably didn’t lose enough blood to need it,” she said as he slurped the salty liquid.  It had been _quite an awful lot_ though.

            Tavros sniffed.  “Thanks for not making it weird,” he said.  “About me having a crush on you and all.”

            “I don’t blame you, I am very beautiful,” said Aranea, very matter-of-factly.

            “If I liked Vriska she would probably make fun of me all the time,” he said.  It occurred to Aranea that Vriska already made fun of poor Tavros all the time.  It probably didn’t mean anything, but could her little sister be smitten with the Nitram boy?  He was a cutie, with big brown doe eyes, shaggy, curly hair that could admittedly do with some styling, and nice dark skin.  His Hylian ears were a little floppy and rounded.  It bore looking into, certainly.

            “Would you like to hear the news?” she asked brightly, to kill the silence.  “Or has your father told you already?”

            “No, he hasn’t,” said Tavros, shaking his head slowly, presumably not to aggravate the migraine that was surely developing due to his nosebleed.

            “Well,” she said, trying not to sound self-important, “I am going to deliver the tribute to the city this year!  I’m taking Vriska of course, and I’ll be sure to bring you something nice.  We’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”

            Tavros smiled.  “Thank you, I hope you have fun.”  His face darkened.  “I think they could get into a lot of trouble out there,” said Tavros.  “If they get into a fight with those monkeys…”

            “Wood baboons are very peaceful creatures,” Aranea explained.  “They wouldn’t stand to fight any but the most determined of enemies!”  It occurred to her that her little sister might in fact have some sort of indwelling spirit of fire and vengeance and that if she really put her mind to it, she would be able to coax a fight out of one of the poor brutes and then either kill it or get her face bitten off, at which point the locals might launch a campaign of extermination against the relatively peaceful animals, and thus drive to extinction the only large primates known to inhabit an oceanic-subtropical climate.  “Stay here Tavros,” she said, standing up, “I’m going to handle this.”

            “Are you going to tell my dad?” he asked.

            “Oh no,” said Aranea.  She didn’t want to trouble the person giving her such a wonderful opportunity so close to the departure date.  “I can deal with my own sister quite easily.  She respects me.  You just wait here.”  She gestured vaguely.  “Read a book.”  There were hundreds of books scattered around the tree house in piles that nearly reached the ceiling in some places.  They had even been incorporated into the furniture as the legs of makeshift tables and chairs.  Aranea scurried of somewhere and Tavros grabbed a book at random.  _Buckminster Funnyuncle’s Martial Arts for Assholes._   Fascinated, he opened it to a random page.

 

>             Since you are clearly too retarded to figure out the difference between a cross and a hook, you obviously won’t be getting anywhere in unarmed combat, so the sooner we get to weapons the sooner I get to pour myself a scotch and rethink my life while staring at a rusty dagger.  Are you even aware of how much pressure you need to break human skin you dumbfuck?
> 
>             No, you’re not, which is why we’re going to take baby steps here ( _retarded_ baby steps, don’t be thinking you’re one of the _good_ babies whose mothers weren’t on skooma for the whole pregnancy) so we’re going to start you off on the most simple to use weapon in all of existence; the spear.  If you thought it was a club: don’t get smart with me, who is writing a book here and _who is paying for me to insult them_?  Exactly.
> 
>             A pointy stick.  You stick one end in the other guy.  It’s simple as shit so you probably already screwed up.  Lots of assholes who are bigger assholes than you (and you are just the worst I _swear,_ so just imagine these other assholes and come back when you’re done barfing) think this is a bad weapon with no skill necessary that’s only used by untrained soldiers getting ready to die.  Well, try to see how long they can go on thinking that with a _fucking spear in their brain—_

 

            “Oh that’s one of my favorites,” said Aranea.  “The author is a condescending bastard of course, but it really is very helpful.  I learned a great deal about sword fighting.”  She stepped out of her room wearing beige trousers, red leather boots, and a long blue top of thick, comfortable looking material with scalloped hems and a baggy hood.  Oh, thought Tavros, she’s still pretty.  He looked away.

            “I couldn’t go running around in the forest in that little dress, now could I?” she asked.  Tavros blushed at the mere thought of it, her long, bare legs getting all scratched up in the underbrush…

            “And it wouldn’t be really conducive to action,” Aranea said, “Should I be involved in actual fighting.”  Huh?  Aranea unwrapped one of the bundles, revealing a large curved sword, like a cutlass or a falchion, made of shiny, bluish metal.  There was a notch near the end that made it look like a fishhook.  The sinuous, silvery hilt, wrapped with black leather, had a pair of prongs on the pommel curving towards each other, and one prong each on the quillons, one facing up and another down.

            “That’s the tribute sword,” said Tavros.  His father had spent a considerable amount of time working on it and would not be amused by its misuse.

            “Nothing is going to happen,” said Aranea, voice calm, even beatific.  “There haven’t been any monsters in the forest for three hundred years, and the monkeys don’t want to fight.” She belted the weapon and gave determined nod.  “Nothing bad is going to happen.”

 

            Never had she been so wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas! Enjoy your lack of a winter tempered by an excess of spiders! This is the second in mitspeiler’s Christmas Giftstravaganza, the horribly named event in which I drown in newly started fanfiction.  
> A lot of humanized Serket fanart has the girls as blondes but I am firmly going to push this redhead thing onto the fandom if it kills me. >:D  
> I was a bit skimpy in the editing department today, sorry but I’ve got to start rezi’s thing too, at least ;_;  
> I wondered exactly _how_ to deal with this story, mainly because it has a lot more races than _Breath Waker_ , the first in this series. Breath Waker uses trolls as a certain race, see, the airborne Rito tribe, on the grounds that all trolls in that world have wings, and it worked pretty well I think. But here in this story we have the Zora tribe, a bunch of seadwellers, as well as Gorons and Twili and other things, and I had trolls cast as members of several different races. The way I handled it is weird, and potentially interesting, assigning roles based entirely on personality and not race. None of the sea-dwellers will be Zora, I shall say that much. I briefly considered just doing this series on a spectrum going from more Zelda-like to more Homestuck-like, and I _kind of did_ , this certainly has fewer Homestucky elements than that one. Of course I still needed to have the furry ears, if they are to have continuity with each other at all.  
> Why Aranea? Well, the idea I had from the very first chapter of Breath Waker is that every story would have a different member of the Homestuck cast playing a different hero. Twilight princess is very light themed so we needed a Light hero, and I wanted it to be a girl anyway. Rose is our eternal Princess (Breath Waker Spoilers?) so it had to be a Serket, and there aren’t any kids younger than thirteen in Homestuck so I decided to just have Vriska be our heroine’s little sister.


End file.
